Why I Am No Longer A Green

I joined the Green Party of England and Wales in 2014. It was good to have a political home again. I had once been a member of the Labour Party, but left in 1994 after Tony Blair became leader; it was immediately clear to me that a Blair Labour party was nothing I wanted to have anything to do with. That was not a choice I ever came to regret. While my politics have always been broadly socialist, it was by 2014 very obvious to me that the single most important political issue facing the world in general and the UK in particular was the climate emergency. As the only party putting this front and centre, the Greens were an obvious fit. The structure was democratic and the rest of the policy platform was all stuff I could enthusiastically get behind. Public ownership of utilities, properly funded local authorities, LGBTQ+ rights, drug law reform and so on? Yes please. Best of all - the party was clearly on the rise. Voting Green in local elections was by that point never a wasted vote…